Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet (11 page)

she'd left her matches. "Henry, this is Denny. He'll be subbing for Kay-Ko. He got caught stealing from the school store. So Vice Principal Silverwood wants me to put him to work." Henry watched, mortified. Keiko was gone. His kitchen haven was now occupied by one of his tormentors. Mrs. Beatty called off her search for a pack of matches and lit her cigarette on the stove's pilot light, then grumbled something about
staying out of
trouble
as she wandered off to eat her lunch.

At first, Henry had to listen to Denny grumble about being caught, getting kicked off flag duty and cornered into working in the kitchen-- forced to do the work of a Japanese girl. But when the lunch bell rang and hungry kids rolled in, Denny's attitude changed as they smiled and chatted him up. They all wanted him to serve them, holding back their trays, leering suspiciously at Henry as they passed.

To

them
, Henry thought, we're at war and
I'm the enemy.

He didn't wait for Mrs. Beatty to get back. He set his scoop down, removed his apron, and walked away. He didn't even return to his classroom. He left his books, and his homework, passing down the hall and out the front door.

In the distance--in the direction of Nihonmachi, he noticed small plumes of smoke disappearing in the gray afternoon sky.

Fires

(1942)

Running toward the smoke, Henry avoided Chinatown altogether. Not because he was afraid of being seen by his parents during school hours, though that
was
part of it, but because of the truant officers. It was almost impossible to skip school where Henry was from. Truant officers patrolled the streets and parks, even small noodle factories and canneries, looking for migrant children whose parents often sent them to work full-time rather than to school. The families probably needed the extra money, but locals like Henry's father believed that educated children meant less crime. Maybe they were right. The International District was normally quite peaceful, aside from occasional gang violence by rival tongs, or by enlisted men who wandered in, then staggered out, drunk and ripe for trouble. Plus, any police officer seeing an Asian kid on the street during school hours would usually pick him up as well. He'd be sent home, where the poor kid's punishment by his parents would probably make him regret not being thrown in jail.

So Henry cautiously edged his way along Yesler Way, on the Nihon-machi side, all the way to Kobe Park, which was now deserted. Walking through the corridors of Japantown, he saw few people out. Like a Sunday morning in downtown Seattle, when all the shops and businesses were closed, and those that were open had few patrons.

What am I doing here? he asked himself, looking up from the barren streets to the cold sky, plumes of black smoke snaking skyward from places unseen. I'll never find her.

Still, he kept busy wandering from building to building. Avoiding the strange looks on the faces of the few men and women who passed him.

In the heart of Japantown, Henry found the Ochi Photography Studio once again.

He couldn't miss the young proprietor, who stood outside on a milk crate looking through a large camera mounted on a wooden tripod. He was shooting in an alley that ran in the same direction as Maynard Avenue, where Henry saw the source of the fires. They weren't Japanese homes or businesses, as he'd feared. They were large burning barrels and garbage cans set ablaze in the alley, fire and smoke pluming up and over the apartment buildings on either side.

"Why are you taking a picture of garbage fires?" Henry asked, not sure if the photographer even recognized him.

The man looked through Henry. Then his eyes blinked as he seemed to remember him. It must have been the button Henry wore. The photographer turned back to his camera, his hands shaking. "They're not burning garbage."

Henry stood at the T where the alley met the street, next to the photographer on his milk crate with his camera and his flashbulbs. Looking down the alley, he could see people coming and going from the apartment buildings, throwing things into the burning barrels. A woman yelled out of a third-story window to a man below and threw down a plum-colored kimono that looped and swirled, settling like falling snow on the dirty, slug-trailed pavement of the alley. The man below scooped it up, regarded it for a moment, hesitated, then threw it on the fire. The silky fabric lit, and burning pieces floated out of the heat like butterflies whose wings caught flame, fluttering on the draft, flickering out and raining down as black, ashy dust.

An old woman brushed by Henry with an armload of papers, throwing them into the fire, where they made a whooshing sound. Henry felt the rush of heat on his cheeks and stepped back. Even from a distance, he could see they were scrolls--artwork, written and drawn by hand. Large Japanese characters disappearing into the heart of the fire.

"Why are they doing this?" Henry asked, not fully understanding what he was seeing with his own eyes.

"They arrested more people last night. Japanese, all over the city. All over Puget Sound. All over the state, maybe," the photographer told him. "People are getting rid of anything that might connect them to the war with Japan. Letters from Nippon. Clothing.

It all must go. Too dangerous to keep. Even old photos. People are burning photos of their parents, of their families."

Henry watched an old man wearily place a neatly folded Japanese flag into the nearest burning barrel, saluting it as it burned.

The photographer snapped the shutter on his camera, capturing the scene.

"I

burned

all

my
old photos last night." He turned to Henry, the tripod shaking as he held it. With his other hand he wiped his mouth with a handkerchief. "I burned my own wedding photos."

Henry's eyes stung as they filled with smoke and soot. He heard a woman yelling something in Japanese, somewhere in the distance. It sounded more like crying.

"We had a traditional wedding right here in Nihonmachi. Then we took our photos at the Washington Park Arboretum in front of the magnolias and rockroses. We wore kimonos--Shinto dressing that had been in my family for three generations." The photographer looked haunted by the scene in front of him. Haunted by the destruction of touchable, tangible reminders of life.

"I burned it all."

Henry had seen all he could take. Turning, he ran home, still tasting the smoke.

Old News

(1986)

Henry searched through the dusty basement of the Panama Hotel, sneezing and coughing, for nearly three hours. In that time he'd found countless photo albums of babies and faded black-and-white snapshots of families celebrating Christmas and New Year's. Boxes and boxes of fine dishware and utensils, and enough clothing to fill a small department store. The items were so random. It was easy to forget that people once cared enough for these things to hide them, hoping to retrieve them another day--presumably after the war had ended.

But serving as somber reminders were the names--like Inada, Wata-nabe, Suguro, and Hori. Most of the boxes and trunks had hanging name tags of some sort. Others had names painted directly on the sides or tops of the suitcases themselves. Quiet reminders of the lives displaced so long ago.

Henry stretched his aching back and spied a rickety aluminum lawn chair that he imagined had seen better days at barbecues and backyard picnics. It creaked as he unfolded it, in chorus with his knees, which popped when he sat down, his body tired from being hunched over boxes and crates.

Resting from his labors, he fished out a newspaper from a nearby bundle. It was an old copy of the
Hokubei Jiji--The North American Times
, a local newspaper still in circulation. It was dated March 12, 1942.

Henry scanned the old-style news articles, printed in English in neat vertical rows.

Headlines about local rationing and the war in Europe and the Pacific. Straining to read the fine print in the dimly lit basement, he noticed an editorial on the cover. The headline read: FINAL ISSUE. "We regret that this will be our final issue until further notice, but wish to acknowledge our deepest loyalty and support of the United States of America, its allies and the causes of freedom ..." It was the last newspaper printed in Nihonmachi before the internment, before they took them all away, Henry thought. There were other articles, one on relocation opportunities farther inland--in places like Montana and North Dakota. And a police report about a man posing as a federal agent, then accosting two Japanese women in their apartment.

"You finding anything?" Ms. Pettison came down, flashlight in hand, startling Henry, who'd grown accustomed to the lonely silence of the basement.

He set the paper down and stood up, brushing himself off a bit, wiping his hands on his pants, leaving two palm-size streaks of dust. "Well, I haven't exactly found what I'm looking for. There's just so much of ...
everything."

"Don't worry, we need to close up for the day, but you're more than welcome to come back next week. The dust needs to settle so we can clean up, and we're sealing the brick tomorrow, but after that all clears, feel free to come back and keep looking."

Henry thanked her, disappointed that he hadn't found anything belonging to Keiko or her family. But he didn't give up hope. For years he'd walked past the hotel. Decades even--never suspecting anything of value remained. He'd assumed that everything from the war years had been reclaimed long ago, accepted that fact and tried to move on. Tried to live his life. But looking at the mountains of boxes he'd yet to search, he felt Keiko's presence. Something of her remained. Inside. He strained to hear her voice in memory.

Lost among his thoughts. It's in there.
I know it.

He thought of Ethel too. What would she think? Would she approve of him snooping around down here, digging into the past? The more he thought about it, the more he realized what he'd known all along. Ethel would always approve of things that might make Henry happy. Even now. Especially now.

"I'll be back this time next week, if that's all right?" Henry asked.

Ms. Pettison nodded and led the way back upstairs.

Henry squinted, allowing his senses to adjust to the daylight and the cold, gray Seattle sky that filled the paned windows of the Panama Hotel lobby. Everything, it seemed--the city, the sky--was brighter and more vivid than before. So modern, compared with the time capsule downstairs. As he left the hotel, Henry looked west to where the sun was setting, burnt sienna flooding the horizon. It reminded him that time was short, but that beautiful endings could still be found at the end of cold, dreary days.

Marty's Girl

(1986)

The next day Henry spent the afternoon in Chinatown, at the barber, the bakery--any excuse to walk by the Panama Hotel. He peered in the open windows, each time seeing nothing but construction workers and clouds of dust everywhere. When he finally found his way back home, Marty was waiting for him on his doorstep. He had a key, but by all appearances he'd locked himself out. Sprawled across the cement steps, Marty tapped his foot, his arms folded across his chest, looking nervous and expectant.

Henry had sensed that something was bothering Marty at lunch the day before, but had allowed himself to be distracted by the thought of finding something--anything--of Keiko's in the basement of the Panama Hotel. Now he was here.
He's here to have it
out with me.
To tell me I was wrong in how I cared for his mother, Henry thought.

Ethel's last year had been a rough time. When she'd been lucid enough to engage the both of them, he and Marty had seemed to get along famously. But once her health declined, and the word
hospice
came up, the real disagreements had begun.

"Pops, you can't keep Mom here--this place smells like old people," Marty argued.

Henry rubbed his eyes, weary of the discussion. "We
are
old people."

"Have you even been to the new Peace Hospice? It's like a resort! Don't you want Mom to spend her last days in a
nice place?"
As Marty said it, he rolled his eyes to the ceiling, which was a dingy yellow color from Ethel's years of smoking cigarettes. "This place is a dump! I don't want my mom to be stuck here when she could be at a state-of-the-art facility."